Alicia

“in his mind, nothing could be more delightful than to live in solitude, and enjoy the spectacle of nature, and sometimes read some book or other.”
― Nikolai Gogol, Dead Souls

“Countless as the sands of sea are human passions, and not all of them are alike, and all of them, base and noble alike, are at first obedient to man and only later on become his terrible masters.”
― Gogol Nikolai Gogol, Dead Souls

“There is titillating pleasure in looking back at the past and asking oneself, 'What would have happened if...' and substituting one chance occurrence for another, , observing how, from a gray, barren, humdrum moment in one’s life, there grows forth a marvelous rosy even that in reality had failed to flower. A mysterious thing, this branching structure of life: one senses in every past instant a parting of ways, a 'thus' and an 'otherwise', with innumerable dazzling zigzags bifurcating and trifurcating against the dark background of the past.”
― Vladimir Nabokov, The Eye

“I burnt as in a fire in her presence ... but what did I care to know what the fire was in which I burned and melted--it was enough that it was sweet to burn and melt.”
― Ivan Turgenev, First Love